Noel

That engine sounds great. A great recording.

DCC sound remains insanely expensive considering the base manufacturing cost difference between drive decoders and sound decoders is a mere fraction of the selling price difference. It's a very small niche market with enormous markup for the manufacturers. I agree its pointless trying to operate more than one sound loco at a time, it's just a dizzy din, hence having just one example of each loco type makes both operational and economic sense. The default sound volume on most decoders out of the box is set way too high IMHO, totally over powering. I've our few sound decoders set to about 20% of volume level. In the long term sound should come down probably driven by the toy segment of the hobby who have always used 'novelties' to market their wares (e.g. smoke generators, operating mail coach scoops, lights, sound, gantry pick ups, coach lights, etc). Personally I think the current DCC NMRA messaging specs and protocol are way beyond its sell by date and needs a revised standard for messaging and data transfer to/from decoders. Technically it is totally jurassic 1980s technology. It should be possible to read or write 500 CVs to or from a decoder sub 2 seconds rather than more than a few minutes pulsing the drive motor with messages like a reliant robin in the 70s. The drive side of DCC is fine, but the interface, API and data transfer is beyond antiquated - its like using MS-DOS in 2015. IMHO DCC in general needs a fresh redesign from scratch. Who nowadays in modern cars knows how to change a fan belt, dip engine oil, change a spark plug, so why should the word CV be even in our vocabulary. Its like trying to develop web applications in assembly language (for IT bods of a certain age who understand my comparison). Current NMRA DCC needs to be buried in order to be reborn for 2015 consumers and pricing rather than the 1980s techno boffins. ESU have made a decent stab of user friendly consoles, but they are still hamstrung with the other manufacturers by slow CV read/write speeds and daft concepts like programming tracks. No human consumer should need to know what a CV is, let alone bit addressing.

The Zimo MX644D decoder can be bought for about €82 from German sites (i.e. £60), but you would need a Zimo programmer and sound files to burn onto it. Speaker for a 141/181 is about €6. No speaker needed for 071/201 as chassis include them.

Sorry, I meant in general the GM prototypes had a more distinctive and impressive sound to my ears then the re-engined A class MVs which were not as vocal even with the retro fitted EMDs. There were some threads on here that explained why they sounded so different, exhausts, gearing, drive motor, etc.

I bought my Zimo sound project decoders directly from Keith Pearson (i.e. MrSoundguy). He was a gentleman to deal with and even customised the sound projects at my request (i.e. adjustments to function mapping, notch thresholds, duration of breaking sounds, etc). I think MSB tried to give the immersion that it was their product rather than them being a mere dealer. I just love Zimo's 'Real Drive' braking and coasting, but I appreciate it is not every bodies cup of tea. The Zimo chip is even better than the Lenz for drive smoothness and ultra crawl speeds.

LOL - It's un-American to buy foreign products Its a good thing they didn't have an A380 when they made the movie AF1, Harrison ford would have had a heart attack running up and down THREE deck levels. I remember well disembarking from a 747-200 in Kennedy about 30 years ago and a BA Concord was standing at the adjacent gate. An american gentleman also disembarking from Club class, growled at his party of friends "How dare the British have the best plane in the world, it's just plain darn wrong we don't have something bigger and faster than that darn stick insect." There was much polite if not just very slightly smug laughter from the British passengers alighting the aircraft as they heard this. The French involvement in supersonic air transport was never mentioned by anybody.

Interesting. The 8 series on the video seems a gulf state style fit out rather than USAF-1. The high tech defensive add-ons and counter measures will probably never be published on media sites or such videos. Never mind 'offensive' defence systems. They got good air milage and flight cycles out of Reagan's two ageing original 747s.

Nice, but as usual the volume is turned up too high. The noisy baseboard may be drowning out the motor sound. Nice layout though. It's a pity the chassis on that particular A class cannot crawl at low speed like MM/Bachmann diesels. My own is not much better. Tempted to cut and shut a Bachmann CL37 chassis to drive our single A class properly. The MrSoundguy recordings on Zimo chips sound particularly well on 071 and 141 chassis with their excellent crawl capabilities and smooth slow acceleration, unlike Hornby jets that take off at 10mph. The Atlas RSD 4/5 chassis and that sound chip might be perfect under an SF A class body. The real sound of GMs always seemed more 'stirring' and dramatic than the tamer A class prototypes, especially notching.

If you have a 3 or 4 digit number plate you will never be stopped out there!

Out running when the registered owners name and address is probably already displayed on the console provides merely ephemeral escape, not to mention the digital number plate and facial photo!!! Don't always need muscle anymore, instead smartware and intelligence. As to some of the toy fare pricing in sterling I agree it is really annoying and insulting, but I think perhaps we are making a bit of a meal of it. Be it laziness, ignorance, sharp practice, europhobia, or just plain thickness its not the end of the world. I've got some good deals there in Euro and Sterling prices. It's more of a problem now than last year due to the big change in exchange rate last winter, with most folk not realising just how much a sterling priced item will actually cost in euro at current exchange rates.

I could watch that all day long. Enjoyable viewing. Like the clever design. Great layout.

A bit of great craic alright, especially for the money. Was it my eyes, or in the video around 22secs when the horn was sounded twice the loco appeared to slow during the horn blast? It was almost as if the loud horn blast on speaker was sucking up current. Love your layout btw.

They look really well

Hmm - stirring the pot! Eine europäische Sinn für Humor

I guess perhaps because it is run as an 'event' (i.e. a toy fare) it may not be considered 'retail' in terms of the act. But I agree ALL prices should be displayed in Euro. Try it the other way around in the UK and you might get short shift.

We visited one of the Normandy D day museum beaches a few years ago. Spent about 4 hours on a tour of the beach and museum camplex. It was erie thinking of the incredible violence that day 18-22yo kids on both sides had to face. The museum had personal stories and life backgrounds about young allied and German kids, including letters home to parents and loved ones, wills, surreal plans for home visits to do 'normal' things. It put a different spin on it for us, rather than the simplistic and highly sanitised WW2 war movies of the 60s and 70s.

Well I hope not, I'm in rolling stock 'lock down' mode. Any future spend should only be 'time' working on the layout and painting/weathering some stock.

Erie listening to that. Brave young airmen on all sides. The casualty rate for bomber crews was truly dreadful, especially for USAF B17 daylight raids. Suffering was suffering, be it carnage in the air or carnage on the ground, or living with the aftermath. Hopefully we will never see its like again.

Those baseboards look superb. As I said earlier I successfully used ply 22 years ago, but if I was starting out again now I would certainly give serious consideration to a modern MDF that takes track pins. My RC model aircraft workbenches were constructed from MDF and they take a lot of load pressure unlike model rail baseboards which have static loads.

22 years ago when I constructed the boards for 'old new layout' (ie kingsbridge), I used 9mm ply screwed and glued on to a lattice timber frames made up of of 3x1" edges and 2x1" cross members. Easy to cut, drill and especially friendly for track pins (see layouts forum). Now materials have moved on since then. I tried the sort MDF that was available 22 years ago, but it was a nitemare to get it to take track pins, far too hard. However I understand there are now softer grades of MDF available that are stable yet accept track pins. Had such been available then I might have tried it. But happy with the ply setup which seems to have stood the test of time so far. Our layout has three split levels so some base boards sections were not straight forward.

LOL "Beam me up Scotty" comes to mind

Thanks. Any idea what the finished livery will be? Anything like this assuming the blue on the EGV?

Well I was glad of the sale. I picked up some stock I was planning to collect anyway over the next 12 months or so, but the prices made it worth the spend earlier than I had planned. All done now with Irish locos and rolling stock. Nuff'ize'nuff'. No excuses now, scenic work pending and some spray work on rolling stock.

Yes indeed. Used that train regularly on work trips to Cork during the 90s. The first time I was on 'city gold' shortly after it was introduced in the late 80s, I was astonished at the quality service, comfort, ability to work on board, and overall travel experience (i.e. compared to the 70s and early 80s trains). It was the first time I'd been on an Irish train that matched up to the comfort of BR intercity service that I has used a lot for work. Pity its gone. Low cost airline business model now prevails, only difference is that in the air it got more people flying, but on intercity rail here that doesn't seem to have had the same level of effect.

The mk4 DVTs are just driving trailers with heat and power generators (i.e. EGV), and are either pulled or pushed by 201s. IE Mk4 DVTs have no tractive capability. In the early 90s there seemed to be a clear strategy to replace the aging loco fleet (071s, 141/181 double headers and A class) with the large fleet of GM 201s that started entering service in 1994. Relegating the 071s to former 141/181/A tasks. The 32 x 201s represented a huge capital investment and modernisation of loco stock. Then only a decade later in 2006 IE made another significant capital investment in loco hauled services with the mk4 coaching stock. FLIP U-TURN then the spending spree in the naughties caught up with the strategic switch to ICRs and move away from the then relative recent capital programme on loco hauled services. Hence the arrival of the 22k fleet and premature cutting up of the mk3s. What's done is done, no use crying now over spilt milk (i.e. apparent wasted of state capital funds lying idle in sidings or prematurley cut up). The 22k ICRs seem clean and efficient and hopefully will have a 40 year operational life. I presume the reason 071s have had service life continued is that they are more suitable for some freight and PWM traffic than the 201s rusting in sidings, or weight restrictions, etc. Personally the 22k seem fine for shorter commuter routes, but IMHO they do not provide a comfortable environment for long train journeys. Comfy seats even if compact is a fundamental for journeys over 90 minutes. Good luck to the new express service. PS: Apologies garlfieldsghost posts crossed cause I was on the phone and didn't hit send.